Professor Romulus’s Wild Explores Club (Lost Episode))
I am writing this down in hopes that I can get some things off my chest and hopefully sleep better at night. I haven’t done anything wrong, but my therapist says talking about it my help me to cope with the situation and move on. I was 13 years old when I saw a program on my local public access channel that horrified and disgusted me beyond measure and left me with mental scars that still haunt me into adulthood. It happened on Saturday February 14th 1998, Valentines Day. I recall that it was early morning around 3:00 am, I was unable to sleep so I went down stairs to the den to watch some TV. It was too early and nothing much of interest was on, we only had a basic cable package at the time. I was switching through the channels looking for something I might find even remotely interesting when I stumble upon the local public access channel. Some show was staring up that I’d never seen or heard of before, the show started off with stock footage of wild animals with musical accompaniment of jungle drums overlaid with what sounded like African Natives chanting. A title appeared in some crappy bright yellow jungle font, obviously done in some free video editing software, it read “Professor Romulus’s Wild Explores Club!” I assumed this was a nature show, all be it a very cheaply made one. I had always enjoyed nature documentaries and I was a huge fan of Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter, so I decided I might as well give it a watch. There was static, and the screen went black for just a second before the picture returned. Production quality degraded further after the intro, now it looked as though it was being filmed with a handheld camcorder. The camera was focusing in on some cheap plastic house plants set close together forming a kind of barrier. The leaves were pushed aside as a heavyset man in khaki explorer’s outfit and hiking boots pusher the plants apart and stepped into frame. It was a fat bald middle-aged man with a sunburnt face and red, grizzled, wiry beard. The man began to speak in a gravelly voice that reminded me of Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice. “Hey There, Wild Explores! Its you’re old pal Professor Romulus!” The fat man ran towards the camera putting his face right up to the lens. There was a demented grin on his face as it filled the entire TV screen and drops of sweat could clearly be seen beading on his forehead. “This is the show where we travel the world to learn what makes animals tick! Ya’ll are just in time for a very special Valentine’s Day Episode of Wild Explores Club!” The camera was jostled around and fumbling at the microphone was heard as the cameraman clumsily followed Professor Romulus through the plastic houseplants down a narrow hallway into a dimly lit room with dingy wood paneling on the walls. The room looked like the den in an old 1960’s, Jim Walters Prefab House in low income neighborhood. The walls were decorated like a discount wilderness explores lodge with cheap looking wooden tiki masks, tribal spears, a couple of mounted animal heads and other crappy props. I was obviously not impressed with how shitty the quality was, but I was sort of intrigued and curious to see where this was going. “Look Explores, even the lions are celebrating Valentine’s Day!” Romulus pointed to a corner of the room and the camera focused in, not on a lion, but a golden retriever wearing a fake lion’s mane. The dog was standing in the corner of the room over a stuffed animal made to look like a lion bobbing up and down, it took me a second to register the fact that the dog was humping the stuffed lion. Now as previously stated I was 13 years old at the time. I was in that awkward state between childhood and growing up, I felt I was too old to watch kid shows and I’d started watching more raunchy adult comedy shows like South Park and other shows on Comedy Central; I assumed this was that type of show. To tell the truth at the time I laughed, but I wouldn’t be laughing much longer. “Fear not Wild Explorers! I’ll keep these amorous beasts at bay!” Romulus shouted as he ran toward the dog and began hitting it with a leather riding crop. At first the dog growled but as Romulus continued to strike the dog it let out a yelp of pain and ran from the room with its tail tucked between its legs and it lipstick hanging out. Romulus continued chasing the dog slapping it with the crop. “Back Semba! Back!” He shouted as he laughed hysterically. I am ashamed and unsure why but at the time I did not see the dog being beaten as disturbing I was still laughing. Romulus eventually chased the dog back down the hallway, the camera man still chasing after them as the dog ran yelping in pain through a dog door to escape its assailant. “Well look who it is!” Romulus exclaimed as the cameraman turned to look at him. Standing next to Romulus was a man in a cheaply made gorilla costume, the kind you get a party store. “It my friend, Eric the Gorilla! You know Explores? Me and Eric are kinfolk.” A demented grin appeared on Romulus’s face as he put his arm around the Gorilla’s shoulder. “We kind of look a little bit like brothers don’t we!” The man in the Gorilla costume grunted happily impersonating a gorilla, as he beat his chest. “That’s right Eric, it is Valentine’s Day!” Romulus said with a devilish grin. “Did you get a present for your girl friend?” The man in the gorilla costume began jumping up and down, moving his whole torso to bob his masked head in a nodding motion. Eric turned around and leaned down before reappearing in front of the camera with big package covered in pink wrapping paper with red hearts. “I wonder what it could be?” Romulus said shaking the box violently. As he shook the box the sound of squealing could be heard inside. “Oh! I know what it is! Guinea pigs!” Romulus removed the lid from the box and reached inside and pull out a live guinea pig from inside. “Oh, Sylvia will love these.” There was a moment of static and then the video cut to Romulus and Eric standing next to a large, glass terrarium containing a huge Burmese python. “Well Wild Explorers, we’re here with Eric’s girl friend Silvia. Are you surprised that she’s a snake? We’ll its like I always say, a gorilla can marry a snake if they’re blinded by love.” Romulus removed one of the guinea pigs from the box, the tiny rodent was squealing frantically as Romulus squeezed it tightly before passing it to Eric, placing it into the gloved hand of the man in the gorilla costume. Eric threw the guinea pig violently into the terrarium where it landed on its back with a thunk. In short order the snake had devoured the guinea pig whole. After the first, Eric and Romulus continued to feed the guinea pigs to the snake until it looked like it was about to burst. Throughout the feeding Romulus was cackling like a man possessed. I was utterly confused as to what the purpose of this show was, or who its intended audience was. I assumed that it was for adults, a comedy shows poking fun at kids educational programing. I wasn’t sure how they were getting away with feeding these live guinea pigs to a snake on television. I didn’t fully understand why at the time, but I knew this wasn’t something you normally saw on TV. It was very disturbing hearing the guinea pigs squealing and seeing all the blood as the snake crushed them in its coils and jaws was just disgusting. “What’s this?” Romulus said as he reached into the box and removed live rat. “This isn’t a guinea pig, Eric! You retard! You can’t give this to Sylvia, it’s too small, like your dick! I’ll eat it instead.” I was shocked as Romulus put the rats head into his mouth a bit it off like a geek at the fair! Blood spurted from the severed neck of the rodent as Romulus tossed it on the floor and spat out the head. I assumed this was trick, there was no way he’d actually bitten the head off a real live rat. “Bad Eric! Bad gorilla!” Romulus took out his leather crop and began hitting the man in the gorilla costume. “Back Eric! Back!” The man in the gorilla costume shrieked like a chimpanzee as he ran from the room. There was another static cut and Romulus was seen standing next to a bird cage. “Hey Explores! Look at what I found in the jungle. The perfect thing for Valentine’s Day, love birds!” The camcorder focused in on the cage where two small brightly colored birds with red, orange, green and yellow markings sat huddled together shivering. Something you should know about me is that I love birds and I owned a two parakeets myself at the time this happened, which may explain why the next part disturbed me so greatly. “Hey, Explores, did you know you can get Love Birds at your local pet store? But if you do, remember to only get one of them.” Romulus began giggling in a deranged way before choking out the word. “It’ll die of a broken heart.” I was extremely confused as to why this was so funny, and I wondered why Romulus would advice people to buy only one bird if the inevitable outcome was to watch the bird slowly languish and die of loneliness? Romulus opened the cage and reached in. The two birds became frantic as Romulus moved his hand toward them, it seemed they’d been badly treated before. The birds were fluttering around the cage chirping madly, in a desperate attempt to escape Professor Romulus’s grasp. Romulus’s hand finally closed in around the birds which was still letting out a shill chirping sound, the bird was terrified. Romulus took the bird from the cage and held it up to the camera. The bird was biting his finger in a feeble attempt to escape as Romulus’s grasp, but the Professor held it tightly in his hand. “Love birds. Love birds? I hate birds!” A completely psychotic grin appeared on his face as Romulus tightened his grip and a muffled cracking could be heard, he then flung the bird against the wall. The lifeless body of the love bird fell to the ground, motionless. Romulus made his way slowly over to where the dead bird lay and slowly raised his foot above its tiny head. Romulus had a look of sadistic delight and chuckled as he brought down his heavy hiking boot on bird’s skull with a sickening crunch. Romulus began to grind, his shoe, grinding and grinding the bird’s head it into the concrete floor. “See Explorers, we got to see what made this bird tick, its just all smeared all over the ground, and my shoe!” I felt nausea wash over me as the camera man knelt to record the dead bird laying with his head laid open and flattened into to globular red and pink jelly, pancake, flecked with feathers and tiny grey fragments of shattered bone. “I’m sure that was a mind-blowing experience!” Romulus said with a cackle. “Next episode we’ll sees if the other one hasn’t died of a broken heart. But what am I talking about the next episode for? We aren’t done with this episode yet and theirs still more fun adventures in this jungle!” Romulus held up a power drill, he held down the trigger and the drill swirled into life. I felt bile welling up in the back of my throat, I could hear a dog yelping in the background. Suddenly the camera turned to the door where the man in the Gorilla costume appeared dragging the dog with the lion mane from earlier by leash. “Lets see what a lion’s brains look like next!” Romulus said as he walked over to the dog and pointed the drill at its skull. The dog was howling and yelping in fear and pain. I couldn’t bear to watch another second. I got freaked out and shut off the TV. I ran back to bed, I lay there still feeling sick unable to get the image of the dead bird and Romulus walking toward the dog with the drill out of my head, I was unable to sleep. Now I knew what kind of show Professor Romulus’s Wild Explores Club was. It was a sick show made by some deranged sociopath who liked to torture and kill animals because he thought it was funny. The next morning, I told my dad what I’d seen and he seemed disturbed. He told me that animal cruelty was against the law and they wouldn’t be allow to show stuff like that on TV, he asked me if I was sure I’d really seen the show and not just dreamed it. I told him that I knew what I had seen. To try to give me some peace of mind my dad called the local public access channel and inquired about the show. Apparently the 3:00 am time slot was reserved for some kind of farm report and the TV station had never heard of Professor Romulus’s Wild Explores Club. Our inquires yielded no results, I told my dad we should call the police but he said that he didn’t think it would do any good unless they could prove that I’d actually seen the show. My dad stay up to watch the public access channel for two whole weeks. Every time 3:00 am rolled around some boring farm report would play just like the TV station had said it would. Throughout the year I was haunted by the memories of the show, I would have vivid nightmares in which I heard the gravely voice of Romulus accompanied by vivid image of animals being abused and killed, sometimes I’d dream that it was my own pets being tortured by Romulus. Whenever I’d have those night terrors I’d wake up sick to my stomach and It was all I could do to run to the bathroom and make it to the toilet before I puked my guts out. I recently did a little research and apparently there are other people who’ve seen this same show on public access channels all over the U.S. from what I can discern it seems someone is hacking the satellite feed of select TV stations and sending out an alternate broadcast from what the station intends to air at that time. It always seems to happen at 3:00 am. I’ve spoken with people who claimed to have watched and some said they even made recordings in hope that the police would apprehend the people who made them. I’ve also heard that there is some kind of sick archive on the deep web featuring “The Very Best of Professor Romulus.” I haven’t actually seen any of these and I would rather die than have to see another one of those horrible shows. Some of the things I’ve read about were an episode in which a chimpanzee was strapped into a make shift electric chair powered with a car battery, then electrocuted while the song Shock The Monkey by Peter Gabriel, played in the background. Another featured a starving dog being forced to eat its own shit out of a food dish after which Romulus declares “You are what you eat, and since you eat shit now you are shit! Shit goes in the toilet!” He then proceeds to drown the dog by shoving its head into a toilet bowl before crushing the dog’s neck with toilet seat until its head separates from its body and fell into the toilet. All the while Romulus laughs. I am also told the Valentine’s Day episode I watched culminated with two horses getting ready to mate. Eric, the man in the gorilla costume, forcibly inserted and fired a shot gun inside the female horse vagina; he then removed the male horse’s penis with a pair of pruning shears and began beating the horse with its own severed member as it bled to death. After the horse died he continued to “beat the dead horse” with its penis before shoving it up the horses rectum. I thank God everyday I did not see the rest of that show. Doing research, I camea crossed a report about a zoo owner in Florida named Romulus Scalf who was arrested for feeding puppies and kittens to alligators and snakes but I can’t find any other evidence to suggest it is the same guy who made the TV show. I’m still searching and hoping this guy’s been brought to justice. Whoever you are Professor Romulus, I hope I never see you’re face again and I hope you pay in hell for what you did to those animals. Category:Lost Episodes Category:CreepyPasta Article